On facebook this week, an unsourced image went out claiming that Easter was related to the Buddhist goddess Ishtar, patron of fertility. This they did to make it look like Easter was about lasciviousness rather than redemption. This information, propagated quickly without corroboration, just goes to illustrate that most things on the internet are pretty useless which is why they are free. It is also an example of apophasis, in which people believe what they want to believe.
I believe that the people propagating this are seeing what they want to see. The names seem to be coincidental. None of the things I have read have corroborated this claim, and none of those spreading the image have responded to my requests for secondary sources. It seems like someone made it up and then spread it, and it is becoming “true” because it is “written” on the internet. What?
The rumor wheel starts with a bit of information that is spread widely because people don’t bother to check and see if it’s true. When these come out about me, I quote from the Book of Job “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” A few weeks ago in class, I asked a student how he knew something, and he said “I read it on the internet” which of course means it must be true. Anyone heard of The Onion? Sometimes I see things that I really want to be true, but I spend a lot of time proving that people didn’t say what people think they said or that it is misattributed. However, I’m always playing catch-up, and by the time the truth gets out too many low information individuals already believe the lie because they are not inclined to do their own homework. This is folly. When you allow other people to tell you what to believe, you in essence become a slave to their will because you act on and pass on the things that they believe rather than your own.
In this case, the rumor began based on a similarity between two words. If, however, you look at other words, like Eostre (old English or Middle Saxon) similar to Eastre (god of the dawn or rising sun), it also looks like that, and let’s not forget how it was recognized before English became the primary language of the Faith. Before that, it was Pascha in latin which looks a lot like Pesah, which is Hebrew for Passover. The history of Easter has always been about resurrection. However, now we have stories of schools who are calling it the Holiday Bunny because they don’t want it associated with a religious theme. Where the devil did the bunny originate anyway? Why eggs? Do people even bother to ask or find out or do they just let people spoonfeed them hogwash and eat it all hook, line and sinker? It makes little sense to me that the word Easter (which is clearly English) would arise from comparisons to a language deep in Asia since the English probably didn’t even know that Asia existed.
Many words change meaning over time. We may see this summer a change in the definition of the word marriage. However, you can only arrive at the meaning of a thing by looking at it through the prism of those who created it. Using a modern perspective on a historical thing strikes me as silly because things have changed in nuance and meaning greatly since their first utterance. Many people think that Googling is a new term, but a century ago, it referred to a particular type of bowling. Look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. Do your own homework. That’s always good advice.
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